ParisTampaBlog

(If you haven’t already read Ben Macintyre’s piece, The Fault Line in Haiti Runs Straight to France, in today’s London TimesOnLine go HERE, read it and then come back, although what Ben tells us about Haiti’s appalling French connection during the past several hundred years may make all that I have to say below meager fare.)

As if in answer to my post on the widespread failure of international development aid (see also the Wall Street Journal column, “To help Haiti, end foreign aid.”) Nicholas Kristof in “Some Frank Talk About Haiti,” asks, why are Haitians so poor?

Has development aid failed because the Haitians are simply not capable of doing whatever is necessary to fix their country and lift it out of its current position as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and in doing so improve the living conditions and opportunities of the people?

And if that is the case, if they are not capable, shouldn’t we abandon entirely any attempt to help them with our billions in aid programs?

Kristof doesn’t believe this to be so. He does cite a number  of mostly conservative pundits and commentators who are down on the Haitians’ ability to govern themselves, convinced that any financial aid coming from us would, as in the past, only be wasted, going into the pockets of the corrupt few, not to the benefit of the impoverished many.

Of course, we have to distinguish between development aid and disaster relief. The current earthquake relief effort is not at issue. Even those most critical of past Haitian aid go along with the urgency and necessity of our sending help now. Earthquake, no less than tsunami and hurricane relief has little if any opposition.

But what might be the next step following the relief effort? How can we help the Haitians move on? Is there something else we could do that could begin to substantially reduce if not eliminate the country’s ingrained, debilitating poverty?

Kristof blames the poverty most of all on the loss of the island’s forest cover (which rich and abundant as it once was can be seen in the neighboring Dominican Republic). Now what trees there still are cover hardly 2% of the land surface, the result being that the soil has so eroded that today the people are no longer able to grow enough food for themselves.

Kristof insists, however, that the people should not be blamed for their situation. They were not primarily responsible for the loss of the forest cover. And now they are not the problem.

On the contrary, he says, to visit and to meet the Haitians is to see that they are the country’s treasure. “Smart, industrious and hospitable, successful when they come to the United States,” they could with our help be successful on their island.

Maybe. In part that is Kristof, always the optimist about people’s possibilities, life’s possibilities. One would like to believe that he’s right. In any case here is what he proposes:

First of all, Haiti, far more than most other impoverished countries — particularly those in Africa —  could plausibly turn itself around. It has an excellent geographic location, there are no regional wars, and it could boom if it could just export to the American market.

According to Kristof a good, perhaps a best strategy for Haiti would be to help them build factories, in particular garment factories, producing goods for the market to the north.  For example, a few dozen major shirt factories could be transformational.

In the coming months as the United States turns from disaster relief to rebuilding it ought not only to send aid workers but also business types, people with money to invest in new businesses. That is what Haiti most needs.

And finally, in Kristof’s own words: “And let’s challenge the myth that because Haiti has been poor, it always will be. That kind of self-fulfilling fatalism may be the biggest threat of all to Haiti, the real pact with the devil.”

And here a footnote: Mark Danner in an op ed piece in today’s Times has just given us a short version of Haiti’s terrible past. To understand the people and the country it would help immensely to read it.

Danner’s conclusion? Not too different from that of Nicholas Kristof:

[What might be done to change things?] “America could start by throwing open its markets to Haitian agricultural produce and manufactured goods, broadening and making permanent the provisions of a promising trade bill negotiated in 2008. Such a step would not be glamorous; it would not “remake Haiti.” But it would require a lasting commitment by American farmers and manufacturers and, as the country heals, it would actually bring permanent jobs, investment and income to Haiti.”

Is President Obama, immersed today in battle with the banks, listening?